HP rolls low-power Ethernet switches

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Hewlett-Packard is shipping a family of network switches it claims are the first to use the newly minted Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) standard. Enabled by new physical layer Gigabit Ethernet chips from Broadcom and a new HP ASIC, the switches are showing significant advances over competing products in third party tests.

The IEEE 802.3az standard defines a protocol that lets two ends of an Ethernet network communicate only when they have packets to transfer. The protocol eliminates the overhead of typical administrative messages allowing systems to stay in a sleep mode as much as 80 percent of the time.

The Broadcom PHY chips provide the key support for the new spec. However, HP claims its second-generation 65nm ASIC that supports media access control and other 10G and Gigabit Ethernet functions also boosts power efficiency on the switches, mainly through better power gating on the chip.

The new HP E-Series zl modules include a range of ten 10G and Gigabit Ethernet adapter cards that slot into existing HP chassis.

An analysis commissioned by HP and conducted by Tolly Enterprises LLC, a third party testing company, compared the HP E5400 and E8200 switches using the EEE spec to Catalyst 3750-X and 4500 switches from Cisco Systems that do not use the standard. It said the HP switches consume 2.1 to 2.3 W per Gbit/s compared to 8 to 20 for the Cisco switches.

The 10G modules use optical fibre and consume up to 56 percent less power per port thanks to the ASIC. The Gigabit modules reduce power over copper links about 32 percent due to the ASIC and Broadcom parts, said Sreeram Krishnamachari, a global product manager at HP.

The EEE spec allows for a 16.5 microsecond latency getting the switches back out of sleep mode. "I expect the industry will adopt the standard pretty quickly," he added.

“With HP’s new modules, our network infrastructure is more agile and provides increased bandwidth for our researchers, yet it requires less physical space and consumes less energy,” said Chuck Sears, a manager of research computing at the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences in Oregon State University, an early user of the switches speaking in an HP press release.

I am not sure how the power consumption comparisons were done that put HP's switches at a lopsided advantage over Cisco's. For a given type of port that follows EEE's LPI (low power idle) mode implementation, I can not see such a big disparity.
At a high level, the architecture involving LPI client requires a new service interface through a reconciliation sublayer. Therefore, any implementation of EEE ideally will see similar energy savings. Once the link is woken up, the differences in power consumption can come from the choice of PHY' used by a vendor. Most FCoE PHY's (Cortina, Broadcom, etc) have similar power consumption numbers so it is very unlikely to see such big differences between HP & Cisco gears. 10G Base-T is another matter!
MP Divakar

HP is doing lot of investments in Ethernet products. But are these chips are commercially available for other OEM’s or only used in the HP products. I think Cisco definitely might be coming up with something to actually compete with the HP switches.

The result in power saving is due to Ethernet 802.3az or due to the new AISC? May be I think this is due the combined effect of both the things hardware as well software. As the article sys there is a huge difference between HP and Cisco switches that does not look like a fair comparison.

This is quite good but the blades marginalise this saving. Maybe if HP sticks these in each of their new servers a large farm will certainly benefit.
This would become be default anyways in a short time and others will be there too. It's little steps like this which goes in making a big difference.

Hi,
From a TCO perspecitive, HP has been leading the charter for a while now in terms of providing significant savings against Cisco and other vendors. As you can see from this independent third party report, the new EEE switches offer up to 55.3% TCO savings against comparable Cisco solutions. So with these products, customers not only realize reduced power consumption but also save on TCO
Video Report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcuE_dxV_2c
PDF report: http://h17007.www1.hp.com/docs/reports/tolly/tolly_12810.pdf
Cheers,
Sreeram Krishnamachari

Energy efficiency is quite attractive feature especially in ethernet switches. I guess its just the satrting it will soon catch the market. Afterall who doesnt want to be more energy efficient. I was wondering are there any drawbacks, I am sure cost wont be really different from other competitors.